BJ's shares priced at $17 for NYSE listing; trading begins Thursday

Shares of BJ's Wholesale Club's common stock are expected to begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange at $17 per share.

The price of BJ's initial public offering is the upper end of a $15-$17 range the Westborough company projected earlier this month, when the company announced it would be offering 37.5 million shares.

At that price, the company could raised $637.5 million. With about 126.3 million shares outstanding, the company is effectively valuing itself at $2.14 billion.

The offering is expected to close on Monday.

This is the second time BJ's has been listed on the NYSE. It was taken private in 2011 in a $2.8-billion deal by CVC Capital Partners.

The company has been growing at a steady pace in recent years, including raising its net income from $24 million in 2016 to $50 million in 2018.

Also rising are incomes from membership fees, which grew to $258.6 million last year from $255.2 million the year before.

The company ended its fiscal 2018 with nearly $12.5 billion in sales, also a three-year high.

BJ's employs nearly 1,000 people locally, more than 3,700 across the state, and more than 25,000 in all, according to the Worcester Business Journal's Central Mass. 150 list of the area's largest employers.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank Securities, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan will serve as joint lead book-running managers and representatives for the underwriters of the offering